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Welcome back to this fourth and final installment of the series. The first three parts should have been enough to get you off the ground, but a few more learning examples wouldn't hurt. It's also a good time to discuss some of the other things these little chips can do. Join me after the break to:
- Expand the sample code, adding features to our simple program while I challenge you to write the code yourself.
- Discuss AVR fuse bits, how to use them, and what to watch out for
- Touch on some of the peripherals you'll come across in these chips
As a grand flourish to the series, I've used the example hardware from this final part to build a bicycle tail light. Hopefully this will inspire you to create something much more clever.
Series roadmap:
- AVR Programming 01: Introduction
- AVR Programming 02: The Hardware
- AVR Programming 03: Reading and compiling code
- AVR Programming 04: Writing code
Adding to the Example Hardware
The example code that I've been working with on the last two parts of this tutorial is a bit boring. It makes one LED blink on and off at a rate of about 1 Hz. That LED was connected to the pin for PD0, so let's start out by adding an LED and resistor to the rest of the PORT D pins for a total of 8 LEDs. We should also talk about inputs, so let's add a switch on PC0. Here's a schematic showing our changes:
I moved the original LED over to some open space on the right side of the breadboard. I'm connecting the cathode to the ground rail on the bottom, jumping the trench with a resistor, and connecting a jumper from that resistor to the Port D pins on the microcontroller. I organized the LEDs in ascending order from right to left making it easy to address them when writing code:
If you know your resistor color codes you'll notice that the Brown-Green-Red resistors I'm using are 1.5 kOhms, strangling the current to a tiny trickle for LEDs. Well, I'm using super bright LEDs, and these resistors were the first that I pulled out. They work just fine for prototyping but should be replaced with a correctly calculated value on a finished product.
Next I hooked up a button. Digital inputs on microcontrollers need to have a value of 0V or VCC (input voltage which is 5V in our case). If they don't have a clear value they are said to be "floating" which can lead to false button readings and other unhappy occurences. We need to set up hardware that will force a value of 0V or 5V at all times. This turns out to be quite simple. By connect the switch from the pin to ground and a resistor from the pin to VCC (called a pull-up resistor) there will always be a very small 5V current trickling into the pin, except when an unrestricted path to ground is created by pressing the button. We don't even need our own resistor as there's one inside the microcontroller that we'll take advantage of. Here's a schematic showing what this connection, along with the internal pull-up resistor, looks like:
That description is a mouthful but all we're really doing is placing a button between PC0 and Ground. Pin 23 is PC0 on the ATmega168 and the pin right next to that (pin 22) is GND. I've connected a switch accordingly. In the following image please note that Pin 22 is connected with a jumper wire to the ground rail above it, but is obscured by the black wire from the push button:
And finally, I want to make connections to the chip for In-System Programming. I like to do this using a patch board that I created. This lets me use a 10-pin IDC cable for easy connection to my programmer:
That's it. I plan to use this hardware with several different firmware examples so double-check your wiring and then start writing code.
Writing Code
Time to practice writing your own code. I have come up with four firmware examples ranging in difficulty from "Hello World" to "Damn That's Slick". I'll discuss each of them briefly but along the way you should try to write your own code, using my examples as… examples. The best way to learn to code is to write a small portion of code, let the compiler yell at you for messing up, and then figure out how to fix it.
Blinking all 8 (8led_1hz)
First thing's first, can you make the example code from Part 2 blink all 8 LEDs instead of just one?
There's really only two things that you need to change from the original to make this happen. First, when setting up the input/output, make all of the pins on Port D outputs, then turn them all on. Second, when toggling the bits in the Interrupt Service Routine use a bitmask that affects all eight bits.
The source package for this part of the series includes this alteration. Grab a copy of it and look at the 8led_1hz code. In it you'll find these changes:
DDRD |= 0xFF; //Set PortD pins as an outputs PORTD |= 0xFF; //Set PortD pins high to turn on LEDs
PORTD ^= 0xFF; //Use xor to toggle the LEDs
As you can see, both portions of code use 0xFF as a bit mask. This is a byte containing all ones, which will manipulate every pin on the registers to which we apply it. Before I had shifted a bit using this:
It resulted in a bit mask of 0x01, protected the upper seven bits from being changed during register manipulation.
Make the LEDs do something interesting (m168_led_effects)
Now I'm going to take a big step forward in C code difficulty. But I challenge you to develop three different types of LED effects by yourself:
- A binary counter which counts up at 1 bit per second
- A flasher that alternates lighting every other LED
- Larson scanner (a simple one, doesn't need to use PWM)
You'll find my example code in the m168_led_effects directory. Here's some of the new things I'm using in my code:
Definitions: I'm using definitions for common settings and for I/O pins, ports, and direction registers. These are constants that the compiler will replace with appropriate values but they make your job much easier. If you get most of the way into a project and realize you need to change some of the hardware this will make it simple to do. Need to change from Port D to Port C? No problem, change the #define and the rest of the code will still work
Delay: AVR libc has a nice delay utility called delay.h. You can see that I've included it at the top of the source file and also written a function called delay_ms(). This is a moderately accurate way to mark the passage of time. The drawback to using this is that you are literally wasting time when the processor could be doing other things. Still, it's simple and if you're new to microcontrollers you'll probably find yourself using this frequently at first.
Also notable in this version of the code is my use of functions to take the complexity out of MAIN. I like to do this when I can to make program flow more readable. If you use descriptive function names it will be easy for others to see how the firmware works just by looking at main. This is also why I comment my code quite a lot. Not just for others, but so I can read it quickly if I come back to it later and don't remember what I originally wrote the program to do.
Before we move on here's a quick synopsis of how I solved the three goals:
- When displaying a binary counter at 1Hz I simply start Timer 2 the same way I did for the blinking LED in Part 2 of the tutorial. Each time it fires I don't toggle the pins, but set the entire port to an 8-bit variable value while incrementing it at the same time. The ++binary_counter increments that value just before it sets Port D. It is crucial that this value be a global variable using the keyword 'volatile' because it is changed by both the ISR and in the main loop. If you don't make it volatile the compiler might optimize the code in a way that disturbs or disrupts the intended functionality.
- Creating an alternating flasher is much the same as toggling a single LED. I set up for the effect by instantiating a variable with every-other bit as 1. When using an exclusive OR operator (XOR) on this value, all of the bits will flip. I could have set up an interrupt with a shorter delay than the 1 Hz interrupt to take care of this but for learning purposes I used a delay instead.
- The Larson scanner is a classic bit of blinky goodness. The core function is to illuminate one LED and sweep it back and forth. To do this I just created a loop to shift the bits, waiting after each change. Once the LED on the end is lit the program leaves the loop and enters another one to shift bits the other way. The same could have been accomplished with a variable that keeps track of which direction the LED is moving, testing during each iteration.
When you've read and understood how this code works it is time to get the button up and running.
Make the button do something (m168_led_button)
We brought a button to the party, let's alter our LED effects so that the button is used to change between the three possibilities. If you've never written code for a button input before there's little chance you'll be able to pull this off yourself, so open up the code in the m168_led_button folder and lets walk through it.
Debounce: Buttons often register more than one press if not handled correctly, a process called debouncing. There is a hardware fix for this, but you can learn about that on your own time. Recently, I gathered a post full of different debounce code, but the one I almost always use is based on code by [Peter Dannegger]. It relies on several parts:
- Code to start a timer with an overflow interrupt
- An ISR to service the timer overflow, resetting the timer for 10ms interrupts and polling the button pin.
- A bit mask and pin definitions that identify how the buttons are hooked up
- A function used to check if a button press has been registered
- Code to check that function and act when a button has been pressed.
The magic is in the ISR debounce code. It flips bits in a binary counter to register four successive button press readings totalling 40ms. That signals a legitimate button press and when the get_key_press function is called it will return a populated key mask. To help understand how this debounce code works, I have included a code example called button_debounce. This has been slimmed down to include only the code used to debounce. Pressing the button will toggle the LEDs.
During the hardware setup I talked about using the internal pull-up resistors. I have to remember to set those up at the beginning of the program or the input pin will be floating. The datasheet talks about this on page 71. When a pin is set to input using the Data Direction Register, writing a high value to the Port bit for that pin will enable the pull-up resistor. From there the current status of the pin can be grabbed from the appropriate Pin register. Notice the ISR used for debouncing reads KEY_PIN, which is defined as the PINC register at the top of the source code. You don't have to read the Pin register because the ISR is doing it for you.
My implementation of button debouncing in the m168_led_button code is just fine, but my use of the button is a hack. I should have used a state machine and gotten rid of the delay functions in the code. For simplicity I just littered calls to get_key_press throughout the code whenever I was trapping the program in a loop. I used the detection of a key press to return to main from the function the program is stuck in.
Pick this apart, writing simple code that you understand and slowly you will build the knowledge base necessary to understand this code as a whole.
Creating something useful (m168_bike_light)
I wanted to finish the code writing section with a useful application for our test hardware. Behold, a bicycle tail light. It has a button to scroll through several different red light patterns, and it uses sleep mode to shut off the LEDs and conserve battery power.
I've changed the program flow to use a state machine. This is a bit of a juggling act. I use an interrupt to set a flag called 'timer'. The main loop constantly polls that flag, as well as the button, and acts accordingly. Whenever that flag is set the next step of the LED effect is performed.
Sleep mode is also used in this example. One thing to note: when in sleep mode the chip uses almost no current, conserving batteries. But the linear power regulator still burns away like crazy. For this to be useful the code should be ported to a chip that operates at low voltages. For instance, you could use a tiny13 and two AA batteries without a regulator. Adjustments would need to be made for less pins and corrected LED resistor values, but these are not difficult changes to make. Have a look at the code in the m168_bike_light folder. The comments and your hard-earned AVR knowledge will help you understand how this works. Good luck!
Now I'll move on to the discuss one of the most important parts of theses microcontrollers:
AVR Fuse Bits
The fuse bits are a set of registers that control some core features of the AVR line of chips. You can think of them as another type of memory, programmed separately from the code that you want to execute.
Read the datasheet
Fuse bits for the ATmega168 are covered starting on page 285 of the datasheet. You should make yourself thoroughly familiar with this information. Incorrectly programming these registers could render your chip useless unless you have a programmer capable of High Voltage Programming (HVP).
There are three fuse bit registers on our chip, the Extended fuse byte, the High fuse byte and the Low fuse byte. All of them use inverse logic, meaning that a '1' means the corresponding feature is NOT selected. I start every project with these registers set to the factory default, information I keep in a text file with the factory fuse defaults for all the chips I work with. At the beginning of every project I try to talk to the chip using the '-v' option of AVRdude to make sure the programmer and chip are both working correctly to save time on later debugging. Here are the ATmega168 defaults:
- efuse: 0b11111111 (0xFF)
- hfuse: 0b11011111 (0xDF)
- lfuse: 0b01100010 (0x62)
I'll touch on most of these features in the next section. But of particular concern are the bits that select the clock source, and the reset disable bit. If you disable the reset pin, by accident or in order to use it as an I/O pin, you will need to use HVP or debugWire to use ISP programming again. If the clock pins are changed you will need the appropriate external clock signal, or HVP for the same reason.
You can program the fuse bits using AVRdude. In fact, there's an example in the documentation. This command will reset the fuses to the factory settings:
avrdude -c dragon_isp -P usb -p m168 -U efuse:w:0xff:m -U hfuse:w:0xdf:m -U lfuse:w:0x62:m
AVR Peripherals (A Whirlwind Tour)
Take a whirlwind tour of the features available to you on this chip. This is gonna be quick, but you already have the core skills you need. Just read the datasheet and using the Internet to connect the rest of the dots.
EEPROM memory
Most (if not all) of the AVR chips come with Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory. This is persistent memory that stores data between resets and when there is no power to the chip. This is where data loggers store information and often contains things like text strings, font data, etc. AVR-GCC will generate an .EEP file at compile time with any EEPROM data that you use in your programs. This needs to be programmed to the chip separately from flash data.
Timers (Regular and Watchdog)
Timers are where it's at in terms of functionality. They go far beyond simply measuring time, and can be used to wake the chip up from sleep mode, to generate pulse width modulation frequencies, and much more. Some chips have asyncronous timers, like Timer/Counter 2 on the ATmega168, that can use an external clock signal separate from the other timers.
Also not to be missed is the Watchdog timer. These timers can save money, and even lives. They are a hardware timer enabled through the fuse bits that will reset the microcontroller if not handled in software. Why would you want to do that? Because nobody writes perfect code. When using a Watchdog timer you frequently reset its counter during successful code execution. That way if your code ever hangs or gets caught in a loop the Watchdog timer will automatically reset the device, getting you out of a software-caused bind. See what [Jack Ganssle] has to say about them.
Real time counter
I mentioned above that Timer/Counter 2 can be run asynchronously from the rest of the timer/counters. Why is that valuable? One of the uses is as a Real Time Counter (RTC). This works in conjunction with a clock crystal to keep track of the time and date.
Hardware PWM
Continuing with the theme of timer/counter based featured, these chips have hardware-based pulse width modulation. PWM generates a signal between 0V and VCC by turning a pin output on and off frequently. The frequency used, and the duty cycle (ratio of high versus low over one period) are set in the registers and you don't have to think about it again until you want to change them. This is useful for a slew of things, like dimming an LED, driving a servo motor, or generating sound on a piezo.
If you want to measure an analog value you need an Analog-to-Digital Converter. Most AVR chips have several of these with varying degrees of precision. This enables you to do things like measure light levels using a photoresistor and reading the value of a potentiometer (using it like a settings knob).
The ATmega168 has a Universal Synchronous and Asynchronous serial Receiver and Transmitter which allows it to communicate in many different ways. This includes serial communications like USB (by taking advantage of the V-USB stack), as well as chip-to-chip communication standards like SPI, I2C, and TWI.
The AVR family often incorporates Serial Peripheral Interface bus communications protocols into its hardware. The USART on the ATmega168 offers master SPI functionality, used to control other chips that also use the protocol via three connections; two for data one for clock.
The USART also offers hardware I2C and Two Wire Interface features. Like SPI these are common chip-to-chip protocols but they use just two wires; one for data and the other for a clock signal.
Analog comparator
The analog comparator uses two input pins to compare analog signals. Based on their relation, the chip can be set to fire interrupts if one changes value compared to the other. The two inputs can be mapped to any of the ADC pins, but only two values can be compared at one time. I've never used this feature and I'm basing this description purely on what I've read in the datasheet. Sorry!
Lock bits
Any code you write to these chips can be read back and stored (albeit what comes back out is machine code, the C code we've been writing can never be reproduced perfectly from what you get off the chip). That can then be used to program other identical chips. But there is a feature called lock bits that can protect that code. Once set, the chip cannot be read, and depending on which bits are set it may not be able to be reprogrammed. That is, until the chip has been erased, which resets these lock bits.
JTAG, debugWire, and High Voltage Programming
In this tutorial we've been using In System Programming, but there are a few other ways to program AVR chips. JTAG is a standard hardware debugging (and programming) interface that some chips have, but the ATmega168 does not. Many of these chips can use the debugWire protocol to program and debug with just one wire communicating on the reset pin. Both JTAG and debugWire protocols are configured using the fuse bits.
High Voltage Programming is used to rescue chips that cannot be reached using other programming methods. There are two kinds, High Voltage Parallel Programming, like the ATmega168 uses, or High Voltage Serial Programming which chips with a low-pin count use. If you disable the Reset pin or enable debugWire, or set the clock source incorrectly in the fuse settings, HVPP or HVSP should be able to reset the fuses and rescue the "bricked" chip.
Power and Sleep
Microcontrollers operate so quickly there is often just wasted time as they scroll the infinite loop waiting for an interrupt to happen. If you are operating under battery power this just wastes juice. By using the power saving and sleep modes batteries can last longer. This is accomplished by turning off power hungry peripherals like the ADC, and shutting down the processor when not needed by putting it to sleep. They're a bit tricky to understand, but often worth your while
That's it really. I've had a great time writing about this. Fiddling with microcontrollers is my favorite hobby and I hope it has become yours as well. These are really very simple concepts that grow in complexity as you pile them atop each other. Just compare the original Part 2 source code with the bicycle tail light code. But that's the fun of it. This is the inventor's equivalent of a choose your own adventure novel. So come up with a challenge and see where it takes you!
Follow Me
Part 4 Firmware package: Github repository
Atmel AVR ATmega168 Datasheet (PDF)


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A coalition to foster a statewide sustainability agenda for Arizona has been propelled by a major grant, two new high-level prominent Charter members, its first public sector recruit and two more utilities joining the diverse business-based group.
Valley Forward Association recently received an $80,000 grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust with the opportunity to renew funding for an additional two years to grow its Arizona Forward initiative, launched last year to promote a healthy environment while encouraging economic vitality. As part of its annual grant program, the Trust awarded more than $1.8 million to 22 Arizona nonprofit organizations.
The University of Arizona and Cox Communications are the newest Charter members, joining nine other high-level entities represented on the Arizona Forward Advisory Board. Other new recruits include Pima County, Unisource Energy Corporation and Southwest Gas Corp., bringing the total roster to 41.
"This generous financial support from the Trust will allow us to continue our education, outreach and advocacy aimed at enhancing the livability and sustainability of communities throughout Arizona," said Diane Brossart, acting director for Arizona Forward. "Our ultimate goal is to encourage more coordinated regional efforts through an exchange of ideas and information statewide that bolster our overall economic growth and environmental quality."
Arizona Forward is leveraging the resources of the 43-year-old Valley Forward to bring business and civic leaders together to convene thoughtful public dialogue on statewide sustainability issues. The group's basic agenda focuses on land use and open space planning, protecting public lands, parks and monuments, as well as transportation, air quality, water and energy.
"We have experienced impressive growth of public and private sector members in a relatively short time, coupled with an initial grant from a private foundation in 2011 and the one we just received from the Trust," said Kurt Wadlington, Tucson building group leader for Sundt Construction and chairman of Arizona Forward. "It demonstrates the need for what we are providing and encourages corporate stewardship.
Since the Trust began its grant making in 1998, it has awarded more than $99.2 million to 422 Arizona nonprofit organizations. The Trust also makes grants in Indiana and as of March 31, 2012, had assets of approximately $350 million. Visit ninapulliamtrust.org for more information about the Trust and its programs.
Arizona Forward is an initiative that brings business and civic leaders together to convene thoughtful public dialogue and advocacy on statewide sustainability issues. Charter Members include: Arizona Community Foundation, Cox Communications, First Solar, Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold, National Bank of Arizona, Solon Corporation, Sundt Construction, The Nature Conservancy, Total Transit, University of Arizona and Wells Fargo.

subset: commoncrawl


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Firefox: If you frequently find yourself scouring image search sites to match images or see if they exist elsewhere, Image Search Options puts popular image search tools right in the Firefox context menu.
After installation whenever you right click on an image you'll be able to send the image link to image search sites like SauceNAO, IQDB, TinEye, GazoPa, and Ascii2D. By default not all of the image search engines are enabled but a quick trip to the extension options menu allows you to enable them all in the main context menu or turn on a sub-menu to further organize them. Image Search Options also includes tools direct file transfer to image search hosts, handy for images buried in the background, behind login prompts, or on your local machine.
Image Search Options is free and works wherever Firefox does.
Image Search Options [Add-Ons for Firefox via GHacks]


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Food, Water Safety Provide New Challenges for Today's Sensors
Sensors that work flawlessly in laboratory settings may stumble when it comes to performing in real-world conditions, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., May 24, 2012 — Sensors that work flawlessly in laboratory settings may stumble when it comes to performing in real-world conditions, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
These shortcomings are important as they relate to safeguarding the nation's food and water supplies, said Ali Passian, lead author of a Perspective paper published in ACS Nano. In their paper, titled "Critical Issues in Sensor Science to Aid Food and Water Safety," the researchers observe that while sensors are becoming increasingly sophisticated, little or no field testing has been reported.
"Although sensor researchers are keenly aware of the various issues challenging their particular technologies, outsiders may perceive an overestimated level of performance, or in certain cases, the availability of 'uber-sensors,'" the researchers wrote. Co-authors are Rubye Farahi and Laurene Tetard of ORNL and Thomas Thundat of the University of Alberta.
Salmonella, E-coli, pesticides and mercury are among key targets for sensors, so a clear public understanding of their capabilities - and limits - is essential, particularly because food and water make for highly complex chemical and biological environments, Passian said.
"Given the current physics of sensors, these hazards pose especially difficult challenges that will require further research and successful demonstration," Passian said.
The researchers explored paths necessary to ensure that sensors work as intended and can help protect the public - a goal they are confident can be achieved.
"While human and animal sensory capabilities are highly specific and can recognize the molecular fingerprints of many potentially harmful substances, developing similar and superior sensing capabilities is faced with many challenges for which nanoscience may provide new solutions," Passian said.
Nanosensors take on a variety of shapes, sizes and architecture. In some devices, nanoparticles (gold, silicon, magnetic composites or polymers) or nanowires (gold, polymers or composites) that react in the presence of the targeted substance are incorporated into the instrument.
Advantages of nano-sized particles in sensors include low cost, high surface-to-volume ratios, high sensitivity, unique optical and electrical properties and fast response, but these are intertwined with offsetting traits.
A number of issues are inherent in the design and operation of nanosensors. For example, the fact the nano-sized particles are so tiny can reduce the probability of interactions with the substance to be measured. Consequently, sensor developers are burdened with reaching a balance between reliability, cost effectiveness, portability, robustness and mass producibility.
Passian and the co-authors also stressed the need for a real-time flow of information to allow for quicker response time to assess risk, damage and notification of the affected populations. Ultimately, while many quality control measures are in place in the United States and other countries, requirements will continue to be refined.
"With the ever-growing global population and unpredictable natural phenomena such as earthquakes, early development of better sensor technology for food and water safety is vitally important," Passian said.
The paper is available at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nn204999j
The Department of Homeland Security funded this research. Passian, Tetard and Farahi are members of ORNL's Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division. UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://science.energy.gov/


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The beach and playdough are two of our very favorite things. Put them together and you have the perfect tactile summer letter activity. My daughter has been able to recognize her letters for a long time as well as their sounds but forming those letters is still something we are working on often. This alphabet activity combines textures to make creating letters truly hands on. As you will see after the initial activity she modified it for more play while I sat back and marveled at how quickly she went from a baby to a child… some days you just need to stare at them don't you?
Gather your materials. You will need some shells, playdough, a cutting board or other playdough friendly surface, card stock, marker, some fun containers and a little letter engineer ready to explore.
I made little letter cards and since our shells were so rigid I only wrote out letters with straight lines like A, E, F, K, etc…
Start by setting things up. When I make an invitation to learn like this I usually have it set up so she knows what to do and then let her explore with out me interjecting. In a classroom I would have this set out on a table and allow the students to come and go ( or not come and go) as they pleased.
First she pressed the playdough down into a flat surface.
Then she dove right in using the shells to create letters that matched the cards.
Some took more planning than others.
Then she changed things up and started using the shells to write in the playdough. As the play shifts encourage the exploration. Activities like this are invitations and when they start exploring like this please don't stop them. She was still learning and having fun even if she wasn't still doing the planned activity. That is not a bad thing, roll with their discovery!
Books About The Beach
all our book lists include affiliate links.
At the Beach by Anne and Harlow Rockwell. A little girl visits the beach with her mom. She plays in the sand, hunts for shells, takes a swim before she settles into a nice beach lunch. A visit to the beach can be a full day and this story gives the reader a great description of what to expect. This is great for young kids who haven't been to the beach. It explains using a young girl's point of view what you bring to the beach and what you can expect to do once you're there. The illustrations are muted and warm and fill the page and included our young red-haired beach girl enjoying herself in each one.
Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach by Melanie Watt is hilarious, I actually snorted while reading it. I love books like this that have absurd humor thrown in with a great story. Before you even start flipping pages on the inside flap you will notice a blurb that ends with "This story is not suitable for pirates" it just makes me giggle! The story follows the most anxious squirrel you'll ever encounter as he tries to make his own beach, only to end up at a busy one! What I love about this book are the details, the small asides will have you laughing and the main story will keep even young ones totally entertained. Super fun and a great message about overcoming fears as well.
What Lives in a Shell? by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld is great book in my favorite science series the Let's-Read-And-Find-Out. This book is a little long for toddlers but really great for preschoolers and easy to break into parts. The book starts talking about snails, then moves to turtles and finally seashells. Like the others in the series, this book breaks down facts to a preschooler's level without losing any substance. If you are looking for a nonfiction book for your little one, you must check out this series, they are hands down my favorite nonfiction for young children.


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NATO Item Identification Number
From WikiLeaks
A NATO (or National) Item Identification Number (NIIN) is a 9-digit numeric code which uniquely identifies an item of supply in the NATO Codification System (NCS).
The NIIN is often prefixed by the NATO Supply Classification (NSC aka NSC, Federal Supply Classification) to form a NATO Stock Number (NSN, aka National Stock Number), however the NIIN alone uniquely identifies the item, the NSC merely adds context by indicating the general classification of the item.
The NIIN's Data Record Number (DRN), in the NCS metabase is 4000. The information listed under in this DRN identifies very specifically the nature of NIIN, its syntax and the procedures associated with it.
Contents |
Format and Syntax
The NIIN may be formatted with dashes, as follows
This format improves readability but is optional as NIINs are often listed without dashes.
The first two digits of the NIIN identify the National Codification Bureau (NCB). The NCB is the entity, typically a government agency, in charge of maintaining the NCS database within a given country. The other 7 characters are a non significant identification number (actually code, as some of these characters may be alphanumeric, although in general NIINs are strictly numeric.) Following are a few examples of NCB codes:
Country | NCB Code(s) |
USA | 00 and 01 |
Germany | 12 |
France | 14 |
Canada | 20 and 21 |
Slovenia | 40 |
Australia | 66 |
Saudi Arabia | 70 |
United Kingdom | 99 |
As the list shows, users of the NCS system not only include NATO member countries, but NATO-sponsored countries as well.
NIIN Catalogs
NIIN / NSN Catalogs include a significant number of items directly associated with military equipment in general, as well as items of a more generic use. These include Electronic Components, Medical Equipment, Office Furniture, Food items, Clothing, Industrial goods (pumps, valves, motors...) and all kinds of Fasteners (bolts, nails, rivets...), to name a few. For this reason, catalogs have a broader appeal, beyond their original audience (Defense agencies and their direct contractors.)
The US Catalog covers in the order of 6 Millions NIINs (Items of Supply) for a total of 13 Millions Items of Production (Part Number + Manufacturer reference).
NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA), compiles on a regular basis the catalogs of several member nations, for the production of the NATO Master Catalogue of References for Logistics (NMCRL). This combined catalog, totaling 16 Million NIINs for approximately 32 Million Parts, is then published on DVD.
Several companies or governmental agencies publish NIIN Catalogs online or on other media. These catalogs vary greatly in term of the completeness of the information as some items and/or some segments of information may be excluded, for National Security reasons or simply for lack of interest by the target audience. The distribution of these catalogs vary also in terms of the subscription cost and access or export restrictions. Some merely provide a "Part Number" lookup, while others offer advanced features such as parametric search (Search of items driven by the technical characteristics such as physical dimensions, material, color etc.) or links to associated data set.
AC/135 Group of directors on Codification


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{Real Party} Pink Trim-A-Tree!
Hosting a Christmas party for kids is a fun way to enjoy the holiday season! Why not pick a unique color scheme like this gorgeous palette of pastel pink, mint green, and light blue! It gives a "winter wonderland" type feel that is oh so gorgeous. It reminds me a bit of a ballerina or tea party feel but with a holiday focus. Simply sweet! Jenny Raulli of Bloom Designs (blog: Bloom Designs) styled this "Trim A Tree" party for her 3 daughters and their close friends.
The girls arrived and received a personalized tshirt in a paint pail to wear while they were crafting. They had a personalized craftbox (made by me) at each of their place settings. It was filled with different crafts that were trees or for the tree and it also had a box of "Chirstmas Colors" ( a box of crayolas that I made a label for and covered) in it. – Jenny
sweet treats: The girls snacked on treewiches, snowmac and cheese, and sipped jolly juice and melted ice. Several sweets were served including ornaments, ribbons, christmas lights, north poles, ice chips, and Santa's favorite- milk and cookies. Jenny made marshmallow pops in the party's colors. My favorite treat she made for the party were PUSH-UP POPS! "I also loved working with the push pops for the first time! (I can see that there are so many endless options with the push pops- can't wait fo rmy next party)," shared Jenny!
Candy Trees: Jenny made the three candy trees on the right of the dessert table out of different sized styrofoam cones. On one, she used ribbon and lollipops to make a lollipop tree. On the other two trees, she used taffy and pink marshmallows. This is a cute decoration for any type of holiday party!
Styling by Bloom Designs
Designs Printables,Tshirts and Lunchboxes by Bloom Designs
Cookies by SugarMeDesserterie


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Botanicare® Powers ClonersTM underwent a series of improvements and modifications to provide gardens of all sizes consistent, reliable production. Redeveloped with a Botanicare® low profile reservoir, these systems decrease propagation time and now include the following network of features and benefits:
• Unique Botanicare Cord Guide designed to block sprayed solution & improve cord management
• Drainage grid with a recessed pump
• An Internally Seated Tray
• HumidomeTM options*
• Customizable points for installation of spouts and fittings
• Botanicare Ceramic Airstones with Air Pump
• Water Volume Indicator
• Dense Neoprenes
*Black Power Cloners™ do not include a Humidome™. Humidome™ can be purchased separately.


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If you are interested in a profession in the medical industry that is very hands on, but does not involve doing surgery or working in an office all day, a physical therapy degree might be just right.
Especially geared toward individuals who enjoy physical fitness, sports medicine and helping patients one on one, PT jobs are a great in-between that can be very fun, very rewarding, and make a real difference in other people's lives.
While all doctors and medical personnel help people, a physical therapist is frequently the last specialist to work with patients after surgical procedures or illness, and through sometimes very long treatment processes, so they get to experience not only the hard work and the pain of therapy, but the joys of helping people get well again.
For a real people-person, going to school to become a physical therapist could be a wonderful career choice.
Physical Therapy Requirements
The educational requirements for someone to get a physiotherapie degree includes first obtaining a Bachelor's Degree (which is required for entry into any physical therapy programs), and then completing a graduate program at any one of a number of accredited physical therapy schools.
A few graduate programs offer early guaranteed admissions programs for some students as well, where the students gain guaranteed future acceptance into the PT program while they are still high school students, and as long as they complete a required set of undergraduate college courses first.
In either case, it is of great importance that students make sure to choose only Commission on Accreditation in PT Education (CAPTE) accredited courses so that they fulfill the necessary educational requirements, both as undergraduate and graduate students or they will not be permitted to sit for their licensing examination.
Once enrolled in a program, there are two different degrees that a PT can earn, either a Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT), or a Master of Physical Therapy (MPT) or Master of Science in Physical Therapy (MSPT). DPT programs are professional entry-level degrees that all physical therapists must complete.
MPT or MSPT programs are continued education, specialty programs that can be taken after a physical therapist has earned their DPT. The DTP physical therapy degree program typically takes three years to complete. Upon obtaining their degree, physical therapists may then take their board licensure examination so they can become employed in their field.
In the UK, degree qualifications differ slightly in that schooling requirements to become a PT are currently that of a Bachelor's Degree in Physiotherapy, only, with the DPT degree considered to be post-professional, continued education. However, this is supposed to change within the next few years, to where UK PTs will all be required to earn a DPT degree as well.
Physical Therapy Jobs
In order to hold a job as a physical therapist, professionals must have passed their state licensure exam so they may practice in their state. If they relocate to another area, a PT must take the licensing exam for that state in order to be allowed to get a new job.
In the US alone, there are close to 200,000 physical therapists licensed to practice at many different types of facilities, with many more individuals working as physical therapists in other countries.
PTs are employed by both inpatient and outpatient manuelle therapie hospital facilities, physical therapy clinics, fitness centers, skilled nursing centers, extended care facilities, schools, hospices, educational and research facilities, private workplaces and sports medicine practices all over the world.
Main duties include assessing patient initial condition, implementing prescribed physical therapy requests by referring physicians, teaching proper use of physical therapy equipment, tailoring therapy to each patient's ability and progression, and carefully monitoring that progress and reporting it back to the referring physician.
Physical Therapy Salary
Entry-level salary for a PT in the US is around $80,000 annually as of 2011, according to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). In the UK, starting salary according to the National Health Service (NHS) is £21,176 - £27,534 (band 5).
In both cases, PT salary rates rises substantially with experience and years on the job, and can increase up to as much as $100,000 or more in the US and up to band 7 (£40,157) in the UK (or higher in the private sector). Naturally, PTs who specialize will make slightly more than the base salary brackets.
Interested individuals who would like to learn more about physical therapy schools and program accreditation should contact their country's professional association for physical therapists, which will be able to point prospective students in the right direction.


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Pink Heart Rhinestone Necklace Set
Regular price
Regular price
Sale price
Unit price
Pink Rhinestone Queen of Hearts Necklace Set. Also available in Blue.
Care Instructions
Care Instructions
Remove jewelry before swimming or exercising.
Put on jewelry after cosmetics have been absorbed.
Personal care products such as lotion or cosmetics can blemish
your jewelry if they come in contact with it while wet.
Do not spray perfume on jewelry.
To clean your jewelry, mix a few drops of mild dishwashing detergent with warm water. Rinse your jewelry in the solution and allow it to air dry.
Buff jewelry with a microfiber cloth. After washing and drying jewelry, buff it with a soft microfiber cloth.
Keep jewelry in a plastic bag when not using. Put only one piece of jewelry per plastic bag to avoid scratching.


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Louisiana Counter Drug Task Force
The mission of the Louisiana National Guard Counterdrug Task Force is to provide highly skilled personnel, specialized equipment, and facilities as requested by Law Enforcement Agencies and Community Based Organizations in response to a changing drug threat.
We, the Soldiers and Airmen of the Louisiana National Guard Counterdrug Task Force, will become the catalysts for synchronized cooperation between and among federal, state, and local agencies across the full spectrum of counterdrug homeland defense operations. By leveraging our unique military capabilities, national resources, and community focus we will play a central role in shaping our nation's response to drug and associated transnational security threats.
- Drug Demand Reduction
- Supply Reduction


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Luxembourg and Belgium Shine in Lowering the Gender Pay Gap
Belgium had a 4.7% percent gender pay gap, with Luxembourg coming in at the lowest at 3.4%
- |
- Written by Banking Exchange staff
Research by Small Business Prices studied how countries have made progress when it comes to overall worker's rights. While Europe has consistently led the way in this area for decades, Luxembourg and Belgium in particular score high on closing the gender pay gap.
Belgium had a 4.7% percent gender pay gap, with Luxembourg coming in at the lowest at 3.4%. In contrast, Korea came in on the highest end of developed countries with a 36.7% pay gap. The two countries also scored a 6 out of 10 in terms of life satisfaction, which places the countries in the top six with the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Denmark.
When asked about the survey, Ian Wright from SmallBusinessPrices.co.uk stated, "For an employer or business owner, finding the right balance is important for maintaining a healthy company culture. There are still large disparities between men and women in positions of power, but the research reveals how different countries are working towards a solution and improving the importance of work/life balance overall."
The Nordic countries also did very well on the survey, with Sweden taking the lead on parental leave and Norway leading on gender equality at the board level. Mothers in Sweden can expect to get up to 69 weeks in maternity leave, while fathers receive around 14 weeks in total. Parents can get up to 54.9% of their wages covered during leave.
In 2007, Norway's government introduced a quota which meant companies needed at least 40% of women to be on the board for businesses in an attempt to address gender imbalance. Belgium only scored 5.9 out of ten on the parliamentary and boardroom diversity score.
The Netherlands had the shortest working week, with only 29.2 hours which is no doubt why it tied for the top of the list on work satisfaction.
Interestingly, while banks are known for long hours, the countries mentioned at the top of the list such as Switzerland and Luxembourg also have a very strong banking industry. Additionally, these countries are well known overall for excellent financial services such as pension fund management, which shows that job satisfaction and minimal gender pay gaps does not mean sacrificing quality of work.
Tagged under Benelux, Human Resources, Financial Trends, The Economy,


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Goodbye And Thanks For All the Apps: Ubuntu App Developer Week - Day 5 And Wrap-Up
Another edition of the Ubuntu App Developer Week and another amazing knowledge sharing fest around everything related to application development in Ubuntu. Brought to you by a range of the best experts in the field, here's just a sample of the topics they talked about: App Developer Strategy, Bazaar, Bazaar Explorer, Launchpad, Python, Internationalization, Launchpad Translations, Unity, Unity 2D, Gedit Developer Plugins, the MyApps Portal, the App Review Board, the UbuntuSoftware Centre, Unity Mail, Launchpad Daily Builds, Ubuntu One APIs, Rapid App Development, Quickly, GooCanvas, PyGame, Unity Launcher, Vala, the App Developer Site, Indicators, Python Desktop Integration, Libgrip, Multitouch, Unity Lenses, Ubuntu One Files Integration, The Business Side of Apps, Go, Qt Quick... and more. Oh my!
And a pick of what they had to say:
We believe that to get Ubuntu from 20 million to 200 million users, we need more and better apps on Ubuntu Jonathan Lange on making Ubuntu a target for app developers
Bazaar is the world's finest revision control system Jonathan Riddell on Bazaar
So you've got your stuff, wherever you are, whichever device you're on Stuart Langridge on Ubuntu One
Oneiric's EOG and Evince will be gesture-enabled out of the box Jussi Pakkanen on multitouch in Ubuntu 11.10
I control the upper right corner of your screen ;-) Ted Gould on IndicatorsIf you happened to miss any of the sessions, you'll find the logs for all of them on the Ubuntu App Developer Week page, and the summaries for each day on the links below:
- Day 1 Summary
- Day 2 Summary
- Day 3 Summary
- Day 4 Summary
- Day 5 Summary (this post)
Ubuntu App Developer Week - Day 5 Summary
The last day came with a surprise: an extra session for all of those who wanted to know more about Qt Quick and QML. Here are the summaries:Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip
By Jussi PakkanenIn his session, Jussi talked about one of the most interesting technologies where Ubuntu is leading the way in the open source world: multitouch. Walking the audience through the Grip Tutorial, he described how to add gesture support to existing applications based on GTK+ 3. He chose to focus on the higher layer of the uTouch stack, where he explained the concepts on which libgrip, the gesture library, is built upon, such as device types and subscriptions. After having explored in detail the code examples, he then revealed that in Oneiric Eye Of GNOME and Evince, Ubuntu's default image viewer and default PDF reader, will be gesture-enabled.
Check out the session log.
Creating a Google Docs Lens
By Neil PatelNeil introduced his session explaining the background behind Lenses: a re-architecture effort of the now superseded Places concept to make them more powerful, provide more features and make it easier to add features through a re-engineered API. Lenses create its own instance, add categories, filters and leave the searching to Scopes. The Lenses/Scopes pairs are purely requests for data, independent of the type of UI, and being provided by the libunity library, they can be written in any of the programming languages supported by GObject Introspection (Python, Javascript, C/C++, Vala, etc.). To illustrate all of this concepts, Neil devoted the rest of the session to a real example of creating a Lens for Google Docs.
Check out the session log.
Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration
By Michael TerryAnother hands-on session from Michael, with a real world example on how to supercharge apps with cloud support. Using his experience in integrating the Ubuntu One Files API to Deja Dup, the default backup application in Ubuntu, he went in detail through the code of a simple program to talk to a user's personal Ubuntu One file storage area. We liked Michael's session so much that it will very soon be featured as a tutorial on developer.ubuntu.com!
Check out the session log and Michael's awesome notes.
Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side
By John PughUbuntu directly benefits from Canonical becoming a sustainable business to support its development, and that's exactly what John talked about. Being responsible for business development in the Ubuntu Software Centre, he's got a privileged insight on how to make it happen. He started off explaining that the main goal is to present Ubuntu users with a large catalog of apps available for purchase, and then continued concentrating on how to submit paid applications to be published in the Software Centre. A simple 5-step process, the behind-the-scenes work can be summarized in: Canonical helps packaging the app, it hosts the app and provides the payment via pay.ubuntu.com, in a 80%/20% split. Other highlights include the facts that only non-DRM, non-licensed apps cannot be submitted right now, but there is ongoing work to implement license key support, and that MyApps, the online app submission portal, can take any nearly any content: apps with adverts, "free" online game clients and HTML5 apps.
Check out the session log.
Writing an App with Go
By Gustavo NiemeyerGustavo's enthusiasm for Go, the new programming language created by Google shows every time you start a conversation with him on that topic. And it showed as well on this session, in which he created yet another "Hello world" application in a new language -you guessed-: Go. Along the way, he had time to describe all of the features of this new addition of the extensive family of programming languages: statically compiled with good reflection capabilities, structural typing, interfaces and more.
Check out the session log.
Qt Quick At A Pace
Check out the session log.
Wrapping Up
Finally, if you've got any feedback on UADW, on how to make it better, things you enjoyed or things you believe should be improved, your comments will be very appreciated and useful to tailor this event to your needs.Thanks a lot for participating. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and see you again in 6 months time for another week full with app development goodness!


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- Home
- Departments
- About Monroe County
- County Attorney
County Attorney
The County Attorney's Office represents the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) and its staff in all civil and administrative matters relating to the discharge of their official duties.
Duties of the County Attorney's Office
The office consists of the County Attorney and nine Assistant County Attorneys. Their duties include:
- Approve all contracts, bonds, and written instruments for legal sufficiency
- Draft and review ordinances and resolutions
- Prosecute and defend all lawsuits brought by and against the county
- Render legal opinions upon request to the Board of County Commissioners, the County's five Constitutional Officers, the County Administrator and staff, and County Advisory Boards
- Represent the County at administrative hearings
- Represent the County Canvassing Board during federal, state, and countywide elections
Duties of the Administrative Staff
- Review of all BOCC approved agenda items
- Research and provide prompt responses to public records requests
- Serves as the County's Records Management Liaison Officer for the County
The County Attorney's Office is prohibited from providing legal advice to members of the community or otherwise representing private clients.
Risk Management
The County's Risk Management functions are administered by the County Attorney's Office, which manages, assesses, and defends liability and tort claims made against the County. Risk Management analyzes sources of potential liability and works to eliminate and/or reduce the County's exposure to claims and monitors insurance carrier counsel's defense of such claims and manages the associated costs. Risk staff reviews every contract to ensure the County has proper insurance coverage in its agreements and for its projects. The team also works with members of the public to assist in resolving legitimate accident claims involving County property, operations, or employees.
Public Records Requests
The County Attorney's Office is the Custodian of Public Records for the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners.
Publications & Presentations
Derek V. Howard, Esq., Monroe County Assistant Attorney
- Local Regulatory Taking Claims: Accounting for State and Federal Regulations to Minimize Liability and Damage Exposure
- Lot Mergers and Takings Claims After Murr v. Wisconsin
- Land Use: How to Deal with Lot Mergers and Takings Claims in Light of Murr v. Wisconsin
Peter H. Morris, Monroe County Assistant Attorney
Cynthia Hall, Monroe County Sr. Assistant Attorney
- State of Emergency: Debris, More Debris, and Lessons Learned - Outline and Presentation.
Florida Commission on Ethics Workshop
Bob Shillinger
County Attorney
County Attorney
Physical Address
1111 12th Street
Suite 408
Key West, FL 33040
Phone: 305-292-3470
Monday - Friday
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.


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Even though most of the ATP and WTA tours have already flocked to Paris for the French Open (which started on a Sunday this year), there were still titles contested in some nearby warm-up tournaments.
Kolya announces his intentions to challenge Rafa and Roger for the French Open title with his win over Juan Monaco (6-2 2-6 6-2) in Poertschach, Austria.
Monaco failed to defend his title from last year. Nikolay was bothered by a thigh injury (he had to have it taped), but assured the press that it wouldn't affect his play in Paris.
Robin Soderling, Robert Lindstedt, Thomas Johansson, and coach Peter Carlsson pose with their hardware after taking out the Russian tennis team (of Dmitry Tursunov, Igor Andreev, and Mikhail Youzhny 2-1 in the ARAG ATP tennis World Team Cup in Dusseldorf.
Anabel Medina-Garrigues shows off her trophy (from Baccarat) after winning the Strasbourg International against Katarina Srebotnik. Scoreline: 4-6 7-6 6-0.
23-year-old Gilles Simon beat countryman Julien Benneteau 7-5, 6-2 at the Grand Prix Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco.
And Agnieszka Radwanska became the first Polish woman to crack $1 million in career earnings after winning the Istanbul Open over Elena Dementieva. Agnieszka beat the Russian 6-3, 6-2.
(photos by Getty Images)


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Gold hit its highest level in nearly three weeks on Monday, and one expert said the precious metal could rise nearly 20 percent by by the end of the year—a call many traders thought was too aggressive for this market.
Spot gold rose as much as 2.2 percent to $1,343.06 an ounce, its highest since July 24. The precious metal has much more room to run, too, said Anthem Blanchard, CEO of Anthem Vault, which sells physical gold and silver to U.S. consumers and holds $1 million in assets. Blanchard cited three reasons for why he thinks gold could climb to $1,600 an ounce by year end, all of which have to do with the fundamentals.
(Read more: Gold settles above $1,330, near 3-week high)
1. A gold short squeeze appears to be in play, Blanchard said. In other words, many investors sold gold short in hopes that its price would plunge, but the price of gold has been climbing for several sessions now. So the shorts must cover their trade, meaning they must buy back the gold position they shorted and take a loss, since they now have to buy gold at a higher price.
Professional traders Anthony Grisanti and Rich Ilczyszyn agreed that short covering, as well as an increase in net longs, has been a tailwind for gold.
"The shorts have greatly reduced their positions over the last few weeks and you almost have as many longs in there," said Grisanti, founder of GRZ Energy, at the New York Mercantile Exchange.
2. An increase in gold demand from China and India has been another catalyst for gold, Blanchard said. China's consumption of gold in the first half surged by more than 50%, reinforcing expectations that the nation will overtake India as the world's top gold consumer this year, the China Gold Association said in a statement on its website on Monday.
3. The biggest driver for gold prices, though, is the expectation that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at near zero, Blanchard said.
Though Grisanti wouldn't speculate on the Fed, he said any talk of tapering would be an absolute game changer for gold. "That's what will put a lid on this thing, because if we taper, gold is coming off," he said.
(Read more: Where to find gains ahead of possible Fed taper)
In Chicago, most traders think tapering is a "pretty good bet" with rates likely to rise, Ilczyszyn said. While the Fed has said it won't raise rates unless employment improves, he argued it's the market, not just the Fed, that actually dictates rates.
If rates rise and Treasury yields fall, Ilczyszyn said, people will realize bonds are "not a safe haven play" and will opt to invest in gold instead.
But Blanchard, pointing to a sluggish U.S. job market and an economy void of a visible increased rate of inflation, is ready to rule out tapering.
"It's very difficult for me to really put any credence into seeing any type of, you know, real tapering," he said. "Interest rates have to be kept low for the foreseeable future and ultimately, that environment bodes incredibly well for gold."
Technically speaking, gold isn't hitting $1,600
Though pro traders see upside for gold, there is a lot of skepticism among traders for Blanchard's $1,600 target.
Though the fundamentals are important, pros said the technicals will be the key driver. A big clue, Grisanti said, is that gold has climbed despite the dollar's strength. Should gold continue to close above its 50-day moving average, he said, the next level of resistance could be $1,348, followed by $1,380, with potential to reach $1,450 an ounce.
If gold continues to close above its 50-day moving average and sentiment among investors changes to where gold is again seen as a "flight to quality"—meaning it will yield a higher return than equities or stocks—pro trader Jeff Kilburg thinks it could rise to $1,420 an ounce, which was major resistance when gold broke down earlier.
If gold is able to break though $1,420, it could go to $1,525, a "key old, multiyear low" that gold had long failed to fall through until gold broke down in April, said Kilburg, founder and CEO of KKM Financial.
Ilczyszyn, founder of iiTrader, is looking at the first level of resistance at $1,350, followed by $1,400, with potential to reach $1,470 an ounce. Barring some kind of "black swan" event, though, he actually thinks gold will trade sideways for the year.
But $1,600?
"It's way too early for that big of a call," Ilczyszyn said, and besides, history shows that gold tends to trade in a $300 range, making such a big move unlikely.
—By CNBC's Drew Sandholm. Follow him on Twitter @DrewSandholm
—Reuters contributed to this report
This story has been updated to reflect Anthem Vault's latest assets under management.


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While some winter-weary locals think of warmer climates this time of year — the desert sun in Arizona is a good example — Robert Isaly has done the opposite.
Formerly of Jerome, Ariz., Isaly has recently taken up a Homer address and, as the new chef at Beluga Bar and Grill, he's brought the taste of the Southwest with him.
"We're anxious to be able to do some changing up on the menu," said Beluga manager Diane Hively. "It's a godsend to have someone willing to go some different directions."
Isaly's Southwest influence is evident in the Tuesday taco special that can be ordered with the chef's homemade black beans and rice. It's in Isaly's tortilla soup accented with cilantro crème fraiche and perfectly suited to a chilly winter day. It's subtly present in the rib-eye steak rub that is the "turf" half of Friday surf-and-turf special.
It isn't all Southwest, however. In addition to the burgers for which the Beluga Bar and Grill has become known, Isaly is introducing some of his other specialties. Drop by mid-afternoon and you might catch him taking a still-steaming homemade apple pie out of the oven. Order the bread pudding and you'll notice its delicately browned surface, colorful cherries cooked into its flavorful center and the white chocolate vanilla bean cream sauce poured over the top.
Beluga Bar and Grill is open Tuesday through Friday, but also is available for catering and special events.
"It's what (Isaly) had specialized in and we have a pretty nice space available," said Hively.
Beluga Bar and Grill has a north-facing view, what Hively describes as Homer's "other view."
"We're not on the water, but it's a really unique opportunity to view Homer from this side of things," she said. "It's a great spot to watch birds, the action on the lake … and when it starts to get dusk and the lights on the hillside come on, it's beautiful."
While studying horticulture in Palm Desert Calif., in the 1980s, Isaly realized the outdoors were too hot for his liking.
"A friend with a job at Marriott was having a lot more fun than I was so I switched careers," he said of working at Marriott's Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa, a luxury resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "I started at the bottom in the kitchen, stocking, whatever."
He also took advantage of Marriott's management training and developed his customer service skills.
Isaly then became the house manager at Thunderbird Country Club in Palm Springs and followed that by working as the food and beverage service manager and then the clubhouse manager at the Ironwood Country Club in Palm Desert.
From there, he made his move to Arizona, working at the Silverleaf Club in Scottsdale, becoming the clubhouse manager at The Country Club at DC Ranch in Scottsdale and then creating catering menus for outside events and corporate catering for Custom Catering in Tempe.
His path finally led to Jerome in 2008, where he was the sous chef at the Flatiron Café. From Jan. 2011-October 2012, he was chef-owner of Alice's Jerome Restaurant, a 60-seat organic farm-to-plate concept restaurant.
When Alice's sold for more than three times the purchase price, Isaly found himself
"free to move about the planet." He arrived in Homer on Nov. 17, "on a two-week trip to see a friend."
Not one to sit on the sidelines, Isaly's arrival coincided with rehearsals of the Nutcracker, so he volunteered with the stage crew for two weeks and "got to meet a lot of people. It was a really fabulous experience."
Impressed by Homer, when he discovered Beluga was looking for a chef, Isaly put his name in the hat.
"If felt like the right opportunity and situation. They were looking to make some changes and do some different stuff and I said I'd be up for the challenge," he said.
What he has discovered about the area has confirmed it was the right decision.
"I love the music, the culture, what's happening with high tunnels and that people are growing their own food. Fresh, local and sustainable are things that mean a lot to me as a cook," said Isaly, who is looking forward to marrying Beluga's existing steak and burger menu with "fresh, local products from the sea and the land."
"They have some excellent things on the menu," said Isaly of Beluga's existing menu. "Now to bring in some other things."
Getting his feet on the ground this time of year, rather than at the height of the summer tourist season, is all part of the plan.
"I said I'd just come in here while it's slow, learn what they do and by the time we come to the peak season, change things a little bit," he said.
Among his favorite things to cook: fresh salmon, halibut and scallops.
"And as far as whatever fresh vegetables are growing, I want to bring that to the table," he said.
He already is introducing fresh, organic greens in the individually made salads. They can be paired with Isaly's homemade salad dressings.
When not at work, Isaly is enjoying the southern Kenai Peninsula in and out of doors. He's an avid hiker and is looking forward to an opportunity to try out cross-country skiing.
"I left my car in the Lower 48 so I walk everywhere. I love to dance. I love the café culture and there's some really good food in this town," he said.
With Isaly's arrival, that could be corrected to say "more really good food in this town."
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Guide
Released | Platforms |
December 13, 2002 September 20th, 2013 | GameCube Wii U |
Developer | Publisher |
Nintendo | Nintendo |
Official Sites | |
Zelda.com/windwaker |
Nintendo's Legend of Zelda franchise over the years has defined a genre, first revolutionizing the action-adventure and then evolving it with several critically acclaimed sequels.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, in many ways eclipses its predecessors. Set in a huge overworld that takes more than seven minutes to traverse by boat (at full wind speed), it's not only easy to get lost, but it's near impossible to find all the secrets without a helping hand. IGN's Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker wiki strategy guide helps you along through the main quest with a detailed walkthrough with plenty of maps and images. It also gives you important tips on all the sidequests, hidden treasures and secrets.
The IGN Guide to Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker was originally written in 2003 by Peer Schneider. We converted it to an editable wiki in 2011. It now houses strategies for both the GameCube and Wii U (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD) versions, as well as a searchable, editable overworld map of the game.


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A presidential election is almost upon us. But if you have young children or grandchildren, you know what's really important this week is Butterfingers, not ballots, and Pop Rocks, not the popular vote.
Amazing Property in Lakeville! 5707 Big Tree Rd
Yes, it's Halloween time again, which means you'll see plenty of witches and vampires scurrying around. You'll no doubt find these characters more amusing than frightening, but you don't have to look far to find things that are a bit more alarming — such as these scary investment moves:
• Paying too much attention to the headlines — Some headlines may seem unnerving, but don't abandon your investment strategy just because the news of the day appears grim.
• Chasing "hot" investments — You can get "hot" investment tips from the talking heads on television, your next-door neighbor or just about anybody. But even if the tip was accurate at one point, by the time you get to a "hot" investment, it may already be cooling down. And, even more importantly, it simply may not be appropriate for your individual risk tolerance and goals.
• Ignoring different types of investment risk — Most investors are aware of the risk of losing principal when investing in stocks. But if you shun stocks totally in favor of perceived "risk-free" investments, you'd be making a mistake because all investments carry some type of risk. For example, with fixed-income investments, including CDs and bonds, one risk you will encounter is inflation risk — the risk that your investment will provide you with returns that won't even keep up with inflation and will, therefore, result in a loss of purchasing power over time. Another risk you will incur is interest-rate risk — the risk that new bonds will be issued at higher rates, driving down the price of your bonds. Bonds also carry the risk of default, though you can reduce this risk by sticking with bonds that receive the highest ratings from independent rating agencies.
• Failing to diversify — If you only own one type of investment, and a market downturn affects that particular asset class, your portfolio could take a big hit. But by spreading your dollars among an array of vehicles, such as stocks, bonds and government securities, you can reduce the effects of volatility on your holdings. (Keep in mind, though, that diversification cannot guarantee profits or protect against loss.)
• Focusing on the short term — If you concentrate too much on short-term results, you may react to a piece of bad news, or to a period of extreme price gyrations, by making investment moves that are counterproductive to your goals. Furthermore, if you're constantly seeking to instantaneously turn around losses, you'll likely rack up fees, commissions and possibly taxes. Avoid all these hassles by keeping your eyes on the future and sticking to a long-term, personalized strategy.
You can't always make the perfect investment choices. But by steering clear of the "scary" moves described above, you can work toward your long-term goals and hopefully avoid some of the more fearsome results.
This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor.


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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
First Post
5 comments:
- Martijn Faassen said...
You should write about PyPy's upcoming "Grand US" tour!
- October 31, 2007 at 4:53 PM
- Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick said...
Hi Martijn!
I think that is the plan, yes. But let's see whether they will have time to write blog posts :-). - October 31, 2007 at 6:16 PM
- Steven Kryskalla said...
Good to see you guys are getting more involved in promoting and showing off Pypy. I check the mailing list from time to time for interesting developments, but a blog is much easier to keep track of!
As far as ideas for posts, maybe something like the old python-dev summaries? (posts every week or two summarizing the new mailing list posts)
Release announcements, sprint announcements / reports, technical information, tutorials, etc. would all be good too. - November 3, 2007 at 3:40 AM
- Sarah Kerrigan said...
Even though there is a lot of work down the road, I am genuinely interested in the progress of this project. I'm taking a compilers class at UCR as a CS student so I'm furthering my appreciation of well written compilers.
We had a guest speaker the other day, Jens Palsberg, who created a subset of Java, miniJava, (the language we are writing our compilers for), talk about the future of compilers. He said that the future is in the ability to generate code suitable for multi-threading. With hardware slowing down and resorting to increasing the amount of cores on a die instead of making them faster, this makes sense. I also asked questions about just-in-time compilers and about the possibilities to improve performance beyond current compilers using runtime information.
To see you guys work on attacking those problems using a high-level language like python shows to me that we are getting closer to reaching those goals.
Keep up the good work. This blog is a great idea. I can't wait to use PyPy to speed up all my python based applications in an expedient and robust fashion. - November 20, 2007 at 7:54 PM
- Sarah Kerrigan said...
Also you should let your comments be displayed on the page without linking.
- November 20, 2007 at 7:56 PM


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You can also display our Winner's badge on your blog, details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Please email Lesley on email@example.com so that she can organise your voucher.
Our Top Three this month have been chosen by the Design Team, who have as always, had a tough job choosing just three projects from all of the amazing entries that we received. The Top Three in no particular order are:
Congratulations girls, you can display the Top Three badge on your blog. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will enter the current challenge. You can find the details here.
We have some more Design Team inspiration for you this week. First of all we have a scenic card from Claire:
Next Debbie's peacock themed card :
Finally Florence's mermaid plaque:
Thank you so much girls for your inspirational projects. We hope that they will inspire you to get crafting and enter the challenge yourselves.
We will be back next week with more projects from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing more of your entries. If you have any questions and you cannot find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.


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French Paper - Parchtone Text -A2 Envelopes (24/60)
In 1949 French Paper Company introduced the first 100% animal-free printable parchment paper, better known as Parchtone. Since that time, animals have breathed a little easier and designers have designed a little better. Parchtone's unique finish and subtle colors provide a natural setting for wild projects, large and small. So unleash your creative instincts.FINISH: Vellum Finish (this is NOT translucent vellum)Acid free


text: The Handle Bar an exfoliating, rich-lather, all-over brick of Man-Soap. Get a real handle on your grooming routine with The Handle Bar, an all-over brick of man-soap that moisturizes and exfoliates. Shea butter, cat's claw bark, coconut oil and jojoba seed powder leave you squeaky clean, with a lets-get-lost-in-the-forest scent of citrus, oak and basil.


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This past year has been the busiest that we have seen from Pixar, with the release of Brave, La Luna, PartySaurus Rex, Finding Nemo 3D, Monsters, Inc. 3D and the opening of Cars Land in Disney California Adventure. On New Year's Eve, the animation studio is looking directly ahead, as a number of original films are in the works. Pixar has shared brand new concept artwork for several of its upcoming films over the next few years, which you can take a peek at after the break!
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Audet, Picard score two apiece to boost Quebec to a 6-4 win over Ontario Blue
by Tina Betz
CALGARY, Alta. – It was a battle at off the first puck drop, but by the time the final whistle blew Quebec had dominated Ontario Blue, beating the opposition 6-4 and skating away with two wins so far this week at the 2013 National Women's Under-18 Championship.
Valerie Audet (St-Bruno-de-Montarville, Que./Nord, Midget AAA) and Éve-Audrey Picard (Longueuil, Que./St-Laurent, RSEQ) both scored two goals en route to the victory, but from the offensive to defensive zone, the victory was a well-fought team effort for Quebec.
"We put lots of pressure on the other team," Audet said after the game. "It was pretty much a team effort"
"It feels very good to get the win," she added. "We practised really hard; it took us about six months to get here."
Sarah-Eve Coutu-Godbout (Rouyn-Noranda, Que./Sud, Midget AAA) scored the first goal for Quebec midway through the first, which carried her province into the second period with a 1-0 lead.
But Ontario Blue fought back hard, with Kirsten Miller (Oakville, Ont./Oakville, PWHL) putting in a shorthanded marker just 35 seconds into the middle frame to tie it up. Audet and Picard both added goals before the period up to give Quebec a 3-1 lead going into the next intermission.
Yet Ontario Blue wouldn't give up, and dug away enough to get three goals in the final frame, creating some intense back-and-forth play through the final 20 minutes, including two from Logan Boyd (Burlington, Ont./Burlington, PWHL) and one from Kennedy Marchment (Courtice, Ont./Durham West, PWHL).
Audet and Picard again led Quebec with a goal apiece in the third to again regain the Quebec lead, with a little help from penalty trouble by Ontario Blue. Annie Germain (Val-d'Or, Que./Limoilou, RSEQ) sealed the deal with last-second empty net goal for Quebec's 6-4 final over Ontario Blue.
Placement and semifinal games take place Saturday at the Markin MacPhail Centre. Stop by the rink, or if you can't make it out, you can still catch the game live for free on FASTHockey by visiting www.hockeycanada.ca/nwu18.
› Summary


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Intel plugs both your sockets with 'Jaketown' Xeon E5-2600s
Oof! Chipzilla unzips double bulge and gets its stuff out
The Xeon E5-2600, formerly known by the code-name "Jaketown" inside of Intel and "Sandy Bridge-EP" when Intel referred to it externally, is finally here for mainstream, two-socket servers.
And now the 2012 server cycle begins in earnest – even if it wasn't soon enough for the most ardent data-center motorheads.
The Xeon E5-2600 is one of a family of server chips based on the Sandy Bridge architecture that Intel has either put out in 2011 or will put out in 2012. The chips are based on a similar core design employed in the current 2nd Generation Core processors for laptops and desktops, and the Xeon E3-1200 processors for single-socket servers and workstations, which came out early last year.
Among the many new features in the Sandy Bridge architecture that are shared across all processors are support for Advanced Vector Extension floating point math and a revamped Turbo Boost 2.0 overclocking mechanism that is more efficient and flexible than the prior implementation.
The Xeon E5-2600 package
All Sandy Bridge processors are manufactured in Intel's 32-nanometer wafer-baking processes, not the 22nm "Tri-Gate" process that Intel will fire up later this year for the "Ivy Bridge" family of PC processors.
Intel generally does not use a new process first on its volume server chips, so eventually there will be Ivy Bridge variants of Xeons that get the 22nm shrink. But that is not today.
Intel was widely expected to put the Xeon E5-2600 processors into the field in full volume last fall, but instead it put the chips out in limited volume (and under non-disclosure) to selected HPC and hyper scale data-center customers who could not wait until today's launch to get to Jaketown.
The Xeon E5-2600 is not just a Xeon E3-1200 with some two-way SMP glue on it make it work pretty with the "Patsburg" C600 chipset that's part of the server platform that Intel calls "Romley." There's a lot more to it than that.
Intel briefed El Reg about all the technical goodies in the Xeon E5-2600 processors ahead of the launch, and walked us through the details of the chip, which weighs in at 2,263,000,000 transistors on a silicon wafer that has 416 square millimeters of area. The Xeon- E5-2600 packs a lot of functionality into those transistors.
Let's start with the cores.
Each core on the Xeon E5-2600 chip has a completely revamped branch predictor hanging off its 32KB instruction cache, and the entire "front end" of the chip – the L1 instruction cache, predecode unit, instruction queue, decoder unit, and out-of-order execution unit – has been designed to sustain a higher level of micro-ops bandwidth and use less power by turning off elements of the front end when it can use micro-ops caches added to the chip.
The core has 32KB of L1 data cache and 256KB of L2 (or mid-level, as Intel sometimes calls it) cache memory. It has two load units, which can do two 128-bit loads per cycle, and a store unit.
Die shot of the Xeon E5-2600
The AVX unit on the cores can do two floating point operations per cycle – twice what the current Xeon 5600s can do – and it moved from 128-bit to 256-bit processing, as well. This is a huge jump, and one that matches what AMD can do with a "Bulldozer" core with half the cores turned off and the scheduler running 256-bit floating-point instructions through half the cores.
The Xeon E5-2600 is designed to have as many as eight cores, and like last year's "Westmere-EX" Xeon E7 processor for high-end four-socket and eight-socket servers and the impending "Poulson" Itanium processor expected this year, the Jaketown chip features a "cores out" design and a ring interconnecting the shared L3 caches and those cores so they can share data.
Each core has a 2.5MB segment of L3 cache loosely associated with its core, but these are glued together by the ring into a 20MB shared cache, which Intel often calls the last-level cache.
Obviously, Intel searches through its chip bins and finds parts in which all of the components on the chip are working, and makes other parts with fewer cores and smaller caches as a means of improving its yields and fleshing out its Xeon E5-2600 line with different performance and price points.
As with the past Xeon and Itanium chips, the Xeon E5-2600 has QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) links coming off the chip to do point-to-point communications between the processors. The QPI link agent, cores, L3 cache segments, DDR3 memory controller, and an "I/O utility box" all have stops on this ring bus. The utility box includes a Direct Media Interface, PCI-Express, and VT-d I/O virtualization as a unit, sitting on this ring bus at the same stop.
Jeff Gilbert, the chief architect of the Xeon E5-2600 processor, told El Reg that this bidirectional, full-ring interconnect has more than a terabyte per second of bandwidth coming off and going onto the ring. Those two QPI 1.1 agents that cross-couple the two Xeon E5-2600 processors share an aggregate of 70GB/sec of bandwidth across those two links. The QPI links run at 6.4GT/sec, 7.2GT/sec, or 8GT/sec, depending on the model of the chip.
One big change with the Xeon E5-2600 chips is the integration of PCI-Express 3.0 controllers into the I/O subsystem right there on the die. The PCI Express 3.0 controller on the chip implements 40 lanes of I/O traffic, which is sliced and diced in various ways in conjunction with the Patsburg C600 chipset.
Each E5-2600 socket has four memory channels, up from three with the Xeon 5600s, and you can hang three DIMMs per channel for a total of a dozen per socket. Intel is supporting unregistered and registered DDR3 memory sticks as well as the new load-reduced, or LRDIMM, memory for those who want to get the maximum memory capacity per socket, which stands at 384GB. Regular 1.5 volt as well as "low voltage" 1.35 volt memory are supported on the processors, and memory can run at speeds of 800MHz, 1.07GHz, 1.33GHz, or 1.6GHz.
The important thing about the Xeon-E5 and the Romley platform design, explains Ian Steiner, a processor architect at Intel's Beaverton, Oregon facility, is that the platform gets back to the core-to-memory bandwidth ratio from the "Nehalem" Xeon 5500 launched three years ago.
The design gets the cache "out of the way", and thanks to that high-bandwidth ring interconnect on the chip and a bunch of microarchitecture tweaks relating to the memory controller scheduler, and that extra memory channel, if you scale from one to two sockets on a Xeon E5 box, you can now get around double the memory bandwidth.
About 33 per cent of that improvement comes from the move from three to four memory channels, another 20 per cent comes from moving from 1.33GHz to 1.6GHz memory, and the remaining 40 per cent comes from the ring and microarchitecture changes.
Based on internal benchmark tests done by Intel, a two-socket Xeon 5600 box with two processors basically started choking at 40GB/sec with 1.33GHz memory. But you can push a two-socket Xeon E5-2600 box to more than 60GB/sec using 1.07GHz memory and as high as 90GB/sec using 1.6GHz memory.


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In today's climate, gardeners, farmers, and home growers are beginning to understand the necessity for providing their produce and plants the nutrients they need. Also, they have to do it quickly to promote a more abundant plant growth in their landscapes, farms, and gardens. The application of the necessary nutrients can be accomplished through inorganic and organic fertilizers. However, because of the increase in environmental concerns, homeowners and growers tend to favor the use of Mobile organic fertilizer over inorganic ones. Inorganic fertilizers contain toxic chemicals that may disrupt and leach the soil. As for organic fertilizers, it should only be applied by the experts of Furthur because it can be just as detrimental and harmful to plants if it isn't applied properly.
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Frederick W. Pomeroy, R.A., 1856-1924
82 inches
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
"The life-size plaster was exhibited Royal Academy, 1898 and this version was exhibited Fine Art Society, 1902. The nude Perseus, not unrelated to that of A. Gilbert of 1882 holds a sword the hilt of which consists of a miniature representation of Andromeda and the monster, Andromeda appearing to be based on Brock's 'Eve', and on his helmet a figure of his own steed Pegasus. Just as Brock had worked under and for Leighton on the Athlete and Python, so Pomeroy worked for him when the Copenhagen Glyptothek asked for a marble version, which was duly carried out" by Pomeroy in white marble." — Lavinia Handley-Read, Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art, p. 111.


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LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 21, 2023 / The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, reminds investors of a class action lawsuit against The Beauty Health Company ("BeautyHealth" or "the Company") (NASDAQ:SKIN) for violations of 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Investors who purchased the Company's securities between May 10, 2022 and November 13, 2023, inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the firm before January 15, 2024.
If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate.
We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2460, Los Angeles, CA 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at [email protected].
The class, in this case, has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member.
According to the Complaint, the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. Problems with BeautyHealth's Syndeo 1.0 and 2.0 devices caused "frequent treatment interruptions." The Company incurred considerable costs to remedy these problems. Even after enhancements, service providers continued to have problems with the devices. The Company would be forced to stop marketing the devices and writedown its inventories. Based on these facts, the Company's public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about BeautyHealth, investors suffered damages.
Join the case to recover your losses.
The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation.
This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics.
The Schall Law Firm
Brian Schall, Esq.
Office: 310-301-3335
SOURCE: The Schall Law Firm


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The sharp decrease in global carbon dioxide emissions attributed to the worldwide financial crisis in 2009 quickly rebounded in 2010, according to research supported by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
In 2010, emissions reached an all-time high of 9.1 billion tons of carbon, compared with 8.6 billion tons in 2009. The downturn was also followed by milestone carbon dioxide emissions from the developing world's emerging economies. In developing countries, consumption-based emissions, or those emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services, increased 6.1 percent over 2009 and 2010.
As a result, 2009 marked the first time that developing countries had higher consumption-based emissions than developed countries.
"Previously, developed countries released more carbon dioxide, but that's no longer true due to emerging economies in developing countries, such as China and India," said Tom Boden of ORNL's CDIAC. "This trend will likely continue in the future based on current developments."
Authors of the paper, "Rapid growth in CO2 emissions after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis" published in Nature Climate Change, credit three major factors for the rapid carbon dioxide rebound.
"The impact of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on emissions has been short-lived due to strong emissions growth in emerging economies, a return to emission growth in developed economies, and an increase in the fossil fuel intensity of the world economy," said the authors of the paper.
So far, the GFC has not contributed to a long-term decrease in global carbon emissions, as has been the case in the past. For example, the oil crises in 1973 and 1979 caused persistent price shocks and structural changes in energy production and consumption that led to a reduction in the global reliance on oil and an increase in the reliance on natural gas, which resulted in a drop in emissions.
"The GFC was an opportunity to move the global economy away from a high emissions trajectory," the authors say. "Our results provide no indication of this happening and indicate that the GFC has been quite different from previous global crises."
Boden cites two reasons for this uncharacteristic rebound.
"The GFC did not impact major developing countries, such as China and India, like it did the United States and the European nations," Boden said. "Also, some of the negative effects on sectors impacted during the GFC, such as the transportation sector involved in international trade, are over or at least have subsided."
This work is a collaborative effort of the Global Carbon Project, a joint project of the Earth System Science Partnerships, to provide regular analyses of the main global carbon sources and sinks. In addition to Boden of ORNL, authors of the paper include Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research; former ORNL environmental sciences division staff Gregg Marland, now of Appalachian State University; Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia; and Joseph Canadell and Michael Raupach of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia. CDIAC is supported by the U.S. DOE Office of Science.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science.
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